Dying Is My Business

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” I yelled back.

But it was too much. My shoulder was still too weak after its dislocation. The staff slipped from my hands. Without the counter-tension of my tug-of-war partner, I fell on my ass. Harelip bobbed in the air with the staff in its hands, laughing at me. The others joined in. Assholes.

The wolf sprang again, bounding over my head. I caught a glimpse of a leather cuff fastened around its right front leg. The wolf clamped its jaws through Harelip’s leathery wing and dragged it back down to the floor. The other creatures bobbed and shrieked in the air, eyeing the wolf warily. The wolf snapped its massive jaws at Harelip, who dropped the staff and grabbed the wolf’s snout, batting at the animal’s head and haunches with its wings. It got its legs up under the wolf and raked its sharp nails along the wolf’s belly, tracing deep red lines through the fur.

“Thornton!” the woman cried out in anguish.

The wolf whimpered in pain. It tried to get its jaws around Harelip’s neck, but it was already too weak. The wolf’s hind legs buckled. Harelip flipped it over, straddling it and scratching more deep gashes into its belly. The wolf whimpered again and squirmed to get away. Harelip grabbed it and stood, lifting the wolf over its head and effortlessly tossing it across the room. The wolf struck the far wall, leaving a red spatter of blood where it hit. Then it dropped, crashing through a pile of old crates and furniture that tumbled down on top of it.

“No!” the woman yelled. She ran toward where the wolf had landed. The creatures in the air flew after her, chittering.

Except for Harelip. Harelip stayed where it was, facing away from me as it licked wolf blood from its fingers. I picked up the staff, gripping it toward the bottom like a baseball bat, the blackened fist at its top.

Harelip sensed me coming. It spun around, fixing me with its jet-black eyes. It opened its wide, tusked mouth in a bloodcurdling hiss.

“You picked the wrong night to fuck with me,” I said, and swung the staff like I was batting for the outfield. The human fist at the tip struck Harelip square in the chest.

Bullets bounced off these creatures’ skin, so in truth I didn’t expect any better results from the staff, despite the short woman’s insistence that I use it. But the moment the fist connected there was a bright explosion of light and fire. Harelip was knocked backward through the air. A glowing, orange spiderweb of fire spread across its skin. Harelip tumbled through the air trailing embers and char, and hit the wall on the opposite side of the warehouse so hard that the bricks cracked and buckled. Harelip exploded into a chunky cloud of burning ash.

I blinked dumbly at the staff in my hands. What the hell just happened?

Six

The four remaining creatures hovered in the air above the short woman. They glanced at the charred remains of their companion at the foot of the wall, then glared at me. They looked pissed, but they also looked wary of the staff in my hands.

I shook it at them threateningly. “Anyone else want a piece of this?”

Yellow Eye shrieked angrily at me, then flew up through the gaping hole in the ceiling. The other three followed, and they disappeared into the dark night sky.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” I said.

Now that the creatures were gone, I went to see if the woman was all right. If she was injured, she didn’t show it. She began frantically tossing aside the old crates and debris that stood between her and the wolf that had come out of nowhere.

“They’re gone,” I told her.

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Help me. I can’t leave Thornton here.”

“Look, lady, I’m sorry about your dog, but those things could come back at any moment,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”

“He’s not a dog,” she said. She gritted her teeth as she pushed a half-smashed crate out of her way. “Just help me.”

If she wanted to stay here to find her pet, she was crazy. Which probably meant I was, too. We’d both seen the same impossible things, fought off the same creatures that couldn’t be real. And yet, she didn’t seem fazed by it at all. Maybe she was used to being crazy. I could always ask her for tips.

With a heavy sigh, I put down the staff and helped her lift away the heavier bits of furniture and junk. “What were those things?”

“Gargoyles,” she said, grunting as she pulled another crate clear of the mess. “They must have followed us here from the cathedral. I cast a ward around this place, but I guess it was too late. They must have already seen us come here.”

I didn’t understand half of what she said. I looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling again. “Gargoyles? For real? Like, off of buildings…?”

She glared at me. “Do they look like they came off of buildings?” She sighed and gazed up at the hole. “They waited until I was alone, and then they broke through.” I understood that part, at least. It was the gargoyles who’d put the hole in the roof. “I should have known better. This is all my fault.” She picked up an old metal folding chair from the pile and threw it aside in frustration. It clattered loudly on the floor. I decided to hold off on any more questions for a while.

Between the two of us the job went quickly. A few minutes later we finally cleared away the last of the debris.

“Thornton!” she said.

But the body on the floor wasn’t Thornton. Thornton was a big gray timber wolf, but what lay on the floor was a naked man, curled on his side in the fetal position. He wasn’t breathing. The floor around his body was slick with blood from the long, deep scratches in his chest and stomach. Bits of something red and meaty poked out of the wounds.

Then I noticed a leather bracelet around his right wrist, in the same place I’d seen it on the wolf’s leg. It had the same intricate, interwoven design in the leather and thin strands of gold. How was that possible? I was sure I’d seen a wolf.

I thought of the old movies I’d seen on the TV in the fallout shelter, ones where Henry Hull and Lon Chaney Jr. played men who became wolves. There was a word for it, but it was impossible. I didn’t even want to think it.

She knelt beside the naked man and felt his neck for a pulse. “Oh no,” she said.

“He’s dead,” I said. It wasn’t a question so much as confirmation. There was no way Thornton couldn’t be dead with his body torn open like that, but sometimes people didn’t believe it until they saw for themselves. They had to touch the body with their own hands because the enormity of it was too much to process otherwise. The mother of the little boy, number eight on my list, had done that. She’d put her hands on the boy’s cheeks like she was checking him for a fever. The memory turned into a rock in my stomach. Suddenly I felt useless and stupid standing there watching yet another woman mourn her loss.

She leaned back on her haunches and shook her head. “Oh, Thornton.”

“We should go,” I said. I took her arm to help her up, but she yanked it away.

“I told you, I’m not leaving him here.”

I knelt down across the body from her. “Look, those things, those gargoyles aren’t going to stay away for long. We need to move now, before this place is crawling with them.”

She looked over her shoulder at the empty warehouse. “They’ve gone to get help. I’d say we’ve got about fifteen minutes before they come back with twice their number. That should give us plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time for what?”

She didn’t answer. She reached into another pocket of her cargo vest and pulled out a long, thick, golden chain. Dangling from its end was a pendant in the shape of a starburst. Four small red gems were arranged in a diamond formation at its center.

I looked up at the hole in the ceiling. We didn’t have time to play with jewelry. The sooner I left, the better. But I couldn’t leave her behind. If those creatures came back and caught her alone, she was as good as